Editorial: Kaanapali sands will keep shifting

A plan is afoot on Maui to turn back time. Specifically, to 1988 at the Kaanapali Beach Resort.

The aim is to bring back sand that has retreated offshore, cutting the size of the beach in half over three decades. The state and the resort would split the $11 million cost of the project, expected to mitigate beach loss for about 20 years.

Battling shoreline erosion this way is a far better approach than trying to stop the natural movement of the sea through the placement of such man-made barriers as steel plates or sand bags. But it’s still a fight against nature’s will — expressed through waves and weather — and against sea-level rise brought on by climate change.

The questions are whether this is the right plan, and whether it is enough. To the second, the answer is an absolute no. It is “a synergistic mid-term step in a much longer adaptation process,” as the state Department of Land and Natural Resources says in an executive summary of the plan. It needs to be coupled with long-term “managed retreat,” which boils down to moving resort structures inland, “a multi-decadal process, requiring years of planning, funding and implementation.”

Stakeholders, from the resort to residents to environmental groups, all say beach replenishment is only a way to buy time; the key will be how quickly and how effectively that retreat can be managed. Another 20 years is barely enough time to bring about adequate long-term change, unless the next steps are under serious consideration even now.

The answer to the first question — is moving sand the right approach? — is a qualified yes, as is the use of some public money to help pay for it. The state’s reasoning is sound, that such restoration is justified when its aim is to renew a resource, particularly one damaged by humans. In this case, global warming has exacerbated sea-level rise and storm severity.

And although the resort’s interest may be a primary driver in the project, the public interest is also served in supporting this important segment of the Maui economy, as well as preserving a stretch of beach utilized by many. In this regard, the resort must guarantee that full and unfettered public access to the shoreline is retained.

The two-month sand restoration effort would begin in October, pending approval of an environmental impact statement by Gov. David Ige and securing of regulatory permits by the DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands. A coalition of some West Maui residents and three canoe clubs is vowing to fight each of a dozen-plus additional permits required. They maintain that the project poses a danger to the reef and fishing grounds, and will alter a crucial canoe racing course. The state and the resort counter that the restoration will actually protect the reef and have minimal environmental impact.

It would be one of the largest beach restoration efforts undertaken in the state, moving 75,000 cubic yards of sand from hundreds of feet offshore. The mechanics are massive, involving a moored crane barge, transport barges, tugboats and an elevated trestle or floating bridge that will take the sand to the shore. Equipment on land would spread the sand, both to expand the beach and bolster a protective berm near the vegetation line. The result: a beach nearly doubled in size, to what it was in the late ’80s.

It’s easy to see such an effort as unnatural, but it does seem the most viable option when the alternative over time is to lose the beach. The Kaanapali effort could well serve as a model (viewed positively) or a test case (viewed more speculatively) for other endangered beaches. Two other restoration projects are pending along the West Maui coast, and the situation in Waikiki is always in the offing. Certainly all eyes will be watching the shifting sands for decades to come.